


a story soldiers tell

by PunkHazard



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jones likes the worst version of himself; that guy’s pretty happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a story soldiers tell

After the umpteenth life spent, Jones reaches the somewhat unexpected conclusion that on the long, long list of things he can live with never seeing again, ever, the top of it (right under ‘1. Eve, Cassandra and Jake dying’) looks something like '2. The way Cassandra repeats _This isn’t real_ like a mantra, fear in her voice and the way her shoulders draw in.

3\. The way Stone reaches for him when Ezekiel grabs the pipe, guilt in his face and the pained set of his mouth.

4\. The look in Baird’s eyes when it finally hits her that he’d been through that loop hundreds of times.

They’d managed to push 'that time he left a bowl of noodles in the microwave for two weeks while he was cracking a Swiss vault’ out of the top spot, which is, in itself, pretty bloody impressive considering he’d abandoned the site entirely and set up in another apartment down the block rather than clean it out, convinced that a small civilization had begun to develop in the mold.

Sometimes he lies; tells Baird it’s only his tenth or so run, but her expression never changes. Two, a dozen, a thousand, always the same tender pride (which he likes), immediately followed by pity and heartache (which he hates). She never believes 'two’ anyway, something about his bearing and his expression irreversibly changed, so much that even he can’t hide it. He keeps to the truth after a few experiments. That reaction is predictable, he really has lost count.

One time he sat on the steps, pulling her back when she tried to press ahead, and he spilled his entire soul to her in a display of self-pity he rarely indulges in. He’d held strong through runs with Cassandra and Jake, the two of them somehow his equals but not his _guardian._ Eve sat with him, rubbing his back while he sobbed about 'not being strong enough’ and 'hopeless’ and 'tried this dozens of times’ and 'tired of this’. She’d handed him the handkerchief she had used to wrap his hands some hundreds of lives ago and told him she’d sit with him for as long, however many times, as he needed.

Then they’d stood back up, shoulders squared.

… one time he kissed Stone. Well, actually–

They were stuck in front of the pipes for fifteen hours after Ezekiel briefed him on the progress they’d made last time. After brainstorming for an hour they started an actual conversation– Jones finally familiar enough with all of Stones’s weird terminology, now thoroughly briefed on his childhood and adolescence from bits and pieces gathered over several lives. Video game characters evidently don’t need much sleep, because they spent the next half a day loitering and chatting.

Then they regarded the pipes again, stretching stiff arms and legs, and Ezekiel had pointed to his upper left corner and asked if they couldn’t just leak out all the hot steam before trying anything else. Stone looked at him, at the pipes, the two of them exhausted, and bored, and now familiar enough with each other that it wasn’t even weird. Then he grabbed the wrench and whacked a huge socket out of place. Alarms started going off behind them.

They usually have about a minute before the rage-people reach them at this stage, so Stone waited ten seconds and pressed his hand to the supercooled pipe.

“You could probably just unscrew that next time,” he’d said. “Won’t set off the impact sensors.”

Ezekiel considered that he’d made dozens of runs, each time with third-degree burns on both his palms. It never hurt any less, even after he’d learned to use the healing pack. Then he'd grabbed Stone’s face and planted a dry smack right on his lips. No tongue, though he’d briefly considered it just to freak the man out. Entertainment is in short supply in a time loop. Stone recoiled, obviously, but then he’d rolled his eyes, grimacing as rage-people rounded the corner.

“You,” Ezekiel had said, laughing just a touch desperately, “aren’t gonna remember any of this the next time around.”

“Yeah,” said Stone, trying to play it cool, “that’s too bad.”

Next time around they pass the pipes, no problem.

Cassandra cries, once.

They’d had some time while she drew up physics worksheets, Ezekiel tapping a wrench against the floor until he got bored of it. She’d asked him to stop, and he told her that she hasn’t managed to get him to stop yet, so what makes her think this time is any different? That made her pause. He’d considered apologizing, having been stuck in a particularly tedious few runs, but she cut him off.

“How many lives?” she’d asked, and he’d made the mistake of actually telling her.

She did the math instantaneously, the look of horror and pity on her face collapsing into a teary mess when he tried to give her a hug. She’d spluttered something to the effect of 'conservatively, a month in this loop, and who knows how many more until you’re out, and how many times did I ignore it?’ and she’d sobbed into his shirt for at least ten minutes, evidently trying to make up for all the times she didn’t do those calculations.

Honestly, Sad Cassandra had made things pretty awkward and Jones didn’t actually keep track of the time so maybe it just felt significantly longer than it was. Either way, he’d told her he didn’t have tissues for her when she’d finally calmed down, trying to keep the watery blubbering out of his own voice. Ezekiel’s pretty sure no one’s ever cried for him before.

Every time after, he’s careful not to mention it again.

The moment Jones wakes up– wakes up, not stumbles through a portal– he decides that gritty-dark theories ending on nightmare cop-outs were always his least favorite, and they were uncreative besides. When he slowly comes to the realization that yeah, he totally saved the team, and they remembered it– remembered him after hundreds of lives, with the weight of hundreds more on his shoulders, the memories of watching them hurt and dying and scared– he doesn’t even feel like bragging.

They are, at least, properly happy to see him and appropriately gushy about his awesomeness. He’s so tempted.

So, so tempted.

Then again, not so tempted that he actually wants to be reminded of the experience every time they want to guilt him into doing something he doesn’t want to, not so tempted that he wants to remember the person he had to become to keep his friends alive, of how many times he’d given up and screwed up and watched them die, at the kind of sacrifices he’d be willing to make when pushed. He likes the worst version of himself– that guy’s pretty happy.

“No,” Jones scoffs, “that doesn’t sound like me.”


End file.
